Taliban

Condoleezza Rice is a household name. But most Americans still have never heard of the man who wrote a book with her, Philip Zelikow.

As the executive director of the Kean Commission, Zelikow is responsible for framing the agenda. He leads the research staff. He decides what evidence the commission sees.

In April, the world media focused on Rice’s appearance before the commission. She claimed, not for the first time, that no one could have imagined terrorists would use hijacked planes as weapons against buildings. This is a demonstrable falsehood, which Bush himself inadvertently exposed a week later. (See “Bush, Rice and the Genoa Warning”)

Rice’s testimony received mostly bad reviews. The commission was credited with investigative fervor. Few reports bothered to note that in the late 1980s, Rice and Zelikow worked closely together on George H.W. Bush’s national security staff.

Zelikow and Rice co-authored a 1999 book about their experiences in the first Bush White House, “Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft.” The book presents “a detailed and fascinating account of behind-the-scenes discussions and deliberations” during the fall of the Soviet empire, according to Library Journal.

Zelikow again served alongside Rice as a member of the Bush transition team in 2000- 2001, when he took part in White House meetings on the terror threat. Since this was of interest to the 9/11 investigation, the Kean Commission recently called Zelikow as a witness, in a closed-door session.

Now imagine if the judge in a trial was a close associate of the star witness.…

Editor’s Note:
For morbid fascination, you can hardly top the neocons’ relentless cynical exploitation of their 9/11 myth. Not content with their initial trifecta win — bankrupting government services, shredding the Bill of Rights and launching endless imperial wars, they are now obviously out to milk it to perpetuate one-party rule. Rove certainly does “understand 9/11″ or at least the profit in its abuse.

Mr. Rove, the first thing that I would like to address is Afghanistan – the place that anyone with a true “understanding of 9/11″ knows is a nation that actually has a connection to the 9/11 attacks. One month after 9/11, we invaded Afghanistan, took down the Taliban, and left without capturing Usama Bin Laden – the alleged perpetrator of the September 11th attacks. In the meantime, Afghanistan has carried out democratic elections, but continues to suffer from extreme violence and unrest. Poppy production (yes, Karl, the drug trade) is at an all time high, thus flooding the world market with heroin. And of course, the oil pipeline (a.k.a. the Caspian Sea pipeline) is better protected by U.S. troops who now have a “legitimate” excuse to be in that part of Afghanistan. Interesting isn’t it Karl that the drug “rat line” parallels the oil pipeline. (Yet, with all those troops guarding that same sliver of land, can you please explain how those drugs keep getting through?)

This essay was originally delivered as a lecture at Trinity Episcopal Church of Santa Barbara, Saturday, March 25, 2006.

In this essay, I offer a Christian critique of the American empire in light of 9/11, and of 9/11 in light of the American empire. Such a critique, of course, presupposes a discussion of 9/11 itself, especially the question of who was responsible for the attacks. The official theory is that the attacks were planned and carried out entirely by Arab Muslims. The main alternative theory is that 9/11 was a “false flag” operation, orchestrated by forces within the US government who made it appear to be the work of Arab Muslims. …

I will argue that the attacks of 9/11 were false flag attacks, orchestrated to marshal support for a so-called war on terror against Muslim and Arab states as the next stage in creating a global Pax Americana, an all-inclusive empire. I will conclude this essay with its main question: How should Christians in America respond to the realization that we are living in an empire similar to the Roman empire at the time of Jesus, which put him to death for resistance against it.

Editor’s Note:
The original posting of this article was split between parts 1 and 2: It is now a single article here.

by David Ray Griffin
April 28, 2006
Part I

Note: This essay was originally delivered as a lecture at Trinity Episcopal Church of Santa Barbara,… Continue reading →

Editor’s Note:
In earlier careers, Dr. Roberts was associate editor of the Wall Street Journal and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan. Now he’s one of the most devastating conservative critics of the neocons’ long fascistic spree. Here he offers a potent and 9/11-mindful counterattack on their bloody war on truth. The final few paragraphs summarize our challenge memorably.

The Bush Regime has killed tens of thousands of people in Iraq and Afghanistan, mainly women and children. The deaths are excused as unintended “collateral damage” of the ongoing war, but the deaths are nonetheless important to the tens of thousands of relatives and friends. An equally important casualty of the Bush Regime is truth. The American public has been trained to obediently accept their government’s lies fed to them by their government’s handmaiden, the US Media. No statement or claim by a Bush Regime Official is too outlandish to be received with acceptance. Consider the claim by Donald Rumsfeld, the US Secretary for War and Aggression, made to the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee on May 17, that Iran was to blame for the instability in Iraq.

Did the senators laugh Rumsfeld out of the room? No.

Did the media remind the “informed public” that it was actually the US invasion and unsuccessful occupation, together with mass detentions, torture, slaughter of citizens and invasions of their homes, destruction of infrastructure and entire cities, such as Fallujah, and removal of Saddam Hussein’s government, which kept the three Iraqi factions from each other’s throats, that destabilized Iraq?…

by Sibel Edmonds & Bill Weaver
National Security Whistleblowers Coalition
Published in CommonDreams.org
September 5, 2006

A wag once famously said that Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot was a play where nothing happened . . . twice. The two former co-chairmen of the 9-11 commission report, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, have released a new book, “Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9-11 Commission.” This book goes Beckett one better — it is the third act of veneer over substance, self-aggrandizement over serious analysis, and cliché over perspicacity. It is another calculated attempt by the former commissioners to place themselves in the media spotlight, and to overcome the humiliation of their widely criticized and mostly debunked report. It is a vapid and substanceless attempt to claim moral high ground and present the co-chairmen as heroes of honesty. It would be a farce, except that it has no story line, save the aggrandizement of the authors. At least they are consistent in doing nothing and proclaiming that to be a sign of their devotion to the country and the government. Beckett once said that “habit is the ballast that chains the dog to its vomit,” and by this measure the chain restraining Kean and Hamilton is a short one indeed.

Editor’s Note:
The truly heroic founders of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition commemorate the fifth year of 9/11 lies and subterfuge with a scathing indictment of the cover-up and its shameless perpetrators. When we finally do get a 9/11 investigation worth the name, they give us a list of 13 authoritative but ignored witnesses who can swiftly put the official story myth out of its and our collective misery.…

Liberal opposition mainly centered around the morality
— or, rather, immorality — of torture, but the debate largely ignored the ticking time-bomb at the heart of this legislation, scheduled to go off, perhaps, in tandem with some future crisis, e.g., another terrorist attack on American soil: the redefinition of the “unlawful combatant” concept that lays the foundations for this administration’s reconstruction of the gulag. Here is the new, broadened definition, as enunciated in the legislation recently passed by the House:

“The term ‘unlawful enemy combatant’ means Ã± (i) a person who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents who is not a lawful enemy combatant (including a person who is part of the Taliban, al-Qaeda, or associated forces); or (ii) a person who, before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the president or the secretary of defense.”

It doesn’t say “alien” or “terrorist,” although it specifically includes members of the Taliban and al-Qaeda.…

In his farewell address in 1796, George Washington warned that America must be constantly awake against “the insidious wiles of foreign influence…since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.”

Today, foreign influence, that most baneful foe of our republican government, has its tentacles entrenched in almost all major decision making and policy producing bodies of the U.S. government machine. It does so not secretly, since its self-serving activities are advocated and legitimized by highly positioned parties that reap the benefits that come in the form of financial gain and positions of power.

Foreign governments and foreign-owned private interests have long sought to influence U.S. public policy. Several have accomplished this goal; those who are able and willing to pay what it takes. Those who buy themselves a few strategic middlemen, commonly known as pimps, while in DC circles referred to as foreign registered agents and lobbyists, who facilitate and bring about desired transactions. These successful foreign entities have mastered the art of ‘covering all the bases’ when it comes to buying influence in Washington DC. They have the required recipe down pat: get yourself a few ‘Dime a Dozen Generals,’ bid high in the ‘former statesmen lobby auction’, and put in your pocket one or two ‘ex-congressmen turned lobbyists’ who know the ropes when it comes to pocketing a few dozen who still serve.…

“The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise power from behind the scenes.”- – Justice Felix Frankfurter

It used to be the three branches – congress, the executive, and the courts – that we considered the make-up of our nation’s federal government. And some would point to the press as a possible fourth branch, due to the virtue of its influence in shaping our policies. Today, more and more people have come to view corporate and foreign lobby firms, with their preponderant clout and enormous power, as the official fourth branch of our nation’s government. Not only do I agree with them, I would even take it a step further and give it a higher status it certainly deserves.

Operating invisibly under the radar of media and public scrutiny, lobby groups and foreign agents have become the ‘epicenter’ of our government, where former statesmen and ‘dime a dozen generals’ cash in on their connections and peddle their enormous influence to the highest bidders turned clients. These groups’ activities shape our nation’s policies and determine the direction of the flow of its taxpayer driven wealth, while to them the interests of the majority are considered irrelevant, and the security of the nation is perceived as inconsequential.

In Part1 of this series I used Saudi influence via its lobby and foreign agents by default as a case to illustrate how certain… Continue reading →

General Pervez Musharraf has partially admitted to some facts in his book. For example he admitted that Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was trapped in the case of kidnapping and murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl, was actually the British secret Agency MI6’s agent and had executed certain missions on their behest before coming to Pakistan and visiting Afghanistan to meet Osama and Mullah Omar.

What General Musharraf tries to evade here is the role Omar Saeed Sheikh has played for the ISI, and more importantly the role he knowingly or unknowingly played in part of the complex operation 9/11. Omar Saeed Sheikh was used to frame the Taliban and particularly Arabs in Afghanistan or the impending 9/11 tragedy.

A fascinating piece from Media Monitors Network. Abid Ullah Jan also has a new book that looks promising. In addition to Musharraf’s tipping of his hand about Saeed Sheikh, Pakistan’s PM also has confirmed reports that then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage — in a conversation with ISI Chief Gen. Mahmood Ahmed, no less — threatened to bomb Pakistan “back to the stone age” if they did not cooperate with the U.S. after 9/11. One could assume that such a threat could not have been made without significant basis.
See also Devlin Buckley’s excellent overview of this subject.

“If independent reporters ever want to gain evidence that proves that elements within the U.S. government had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks but failed to defend against them, or even anticipated and then enhanced the impact of the events for future effect, then transcripts of bin Laden’s U.S. intercepted communications between January — September 2001 would most likely make the case.”

Most people will remember the infamous “bin Laden confession video” which was reportedly ‘obtained’ by US forces in Afghanistan after the fall of Jalalabad in November, 2001. The video, which has been offered as proof by the Bush administration that Osama bin Laden ordered the September 11, 2001 attacks, was broadcast in media outlets beginning in December 2001.

But now, a researcher claims that several kinds of evidence related to the video show that the US military’s story of its origin is false.

Drawing on information gleaned directly from translations of the audio, public statements by Tony Blair and mainstream news articles, researcher Maher Osseiran has offered a compelling account of the origin of the video. His shocking conclusion is that the video was not ‘obtained’ by US forces in Jalalabad; rather it was very likely the product of a US-sponsored ‘sting operation’, possibly conducted with the assistance of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, in late September, 2001.

Osseiran has been researching and publishing articles about the story for more than a year now, but now he has… Continue reading →

My purpose in publishing this essay is to introduce a perspective, relevant to the debates about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, that thus far has not been part of the public discussion.

One way to understand the effect of 9/11, in most general terms, is to see that it allowed the agenda developed in the 1990s by neoconservatives—often called simply “neocons”—to be implemented. There is agreement on this point across the political spectrum. From the right, for example, Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke say that 9/11 allowed the “preexisting ideological agenda” of the neoconservatives to be “taken off the shelf . . . and relabeled as the response to terror.”1 Stephen Sniegoski, writing from the left, says that “it was only the traumatic effects of the 9/11 terrorism that enabled the agenda of the neocons to become the policy of the United States of America.”2

What was this agenda? It was, in essence, that the United States should use its military supremacy to establish an empire that includes the whole world–a global Pax Americana. Three major means to this end were suggested. One of these was to make U.S. military supremacy over other nations even greater, so that it would be completely beyond challenge. This goal was to be achieved by increasing the money devoted to military purposes, then using this money to complete the “revolution in military affairs” made possible by… Continue reading →

Professor David Ray Griffin is the nemesis of the official 9/11
conspiracy theory. In his latest book, Debunking 9/11 Debunking, Griffin
destroys the credibility of the National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST) and Popular Mechanics reports, annihilates his
critics, and proves himself to be a better scientist and engineer than
the defenders of the official story.

Griffin’s book is 385 pages divided into four chapters and containing
1,209 footnotes. Without question, the book is the most thorough
presentation and examination of all known facts about the 9/11 attacks.
Griffin is a person who is sensitive to evidence, logic, and scientific
reasoning. There is no counterpart on the official side of the story who
is as fully informed on all aspects of the attacks as Griffin.

At the outset, Griffin points out that the reader’s choice is between
two conspiracy theories: One is that Muslim fanatics, who were not
qualified to fly airplanes, defeated the security apparatus of the US
and succeeded in three out of four attacks using passenger jets as
weapons. The other is that security failed across the board, not merely
partially but totally, because of complicity of some part of the US
government.

Griffin points out that there has been no independent investigation of
9/11. What we have are a report by a political commission headed by Bush
administration factotum Philip Zelikow, a NIST report produced by the
Bush administration’s Department of Commerce, and a journalistic account
produced by Popular Mechanics.…

FRENCH intelligence services warned their US counterparts, eight months before the attacks of September 11, 2001, that al-Qaeda was planning to hijack a US-bound plane, a media report said today.

The information that Osama bin Laden’s group, working with Taliban militants and Chechen rebels, had been plotting the move was passed on to Bill Murray, head of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Paris bureau, Le Monde daily said.

The paper published a copy of the first page of a five-page document which it said had been handed over to the CIA in January 2001 by the French foreign intelligence agency, the DGSE.

Le Monde said the document, titled “Aircaft hijack plan by radical Islamists,” was part of 328 pages of a DGSE file on al-Qaeda leaked to the paper which it said was practically the entirety of the French intelligence services’ dossier on the network.

The five-page document said the plotters began working on the plan in 2000.

Their plan was to hijack a plane flying from the German city of Frankfurt, where there was an al-Qaeda cell, towards an American airport.

The DGSE document said the plotters considered seven airlines, two of which — American and United Airlines — had planes hijacked in the September 2001 attacks and flown into buildings in US cities.

September 11, 2001: The French Knew Much About It
By Guillaume DasquiéLe Monde
Monday 16 April 2004

It’s an impressive mass of documents. From a distance, one would imagine a doctoral thesis. On closer inspection: nothing of the kind. Red stamps “Confidential-Defense” and “Strictly National Usage” on every page. At the top on the left, a royal blue logo: that of the DGSE, Direction générale des services extérieurs [General Directorate for Foreign Services], the French secret services. In total, 328 classified pages. Notes, reports, syntheses and summaries, maps, graphs, organization charts, satellite photos. All exclusively devoted to al-Qaeda, its leaders, its seconds-in-command, its hide-outs and training camps. Also to its financial supports. Nothing less than the fundamentals of the DGSE reports compiled between July 2000 and October 2001. A veritable encyclopedia.

At the end of several months of investigation of this very special documentation, we contacted DGSE headquarters. And on April 3, the present chief of staff, Emmanuel Renoult, received us there, within the confines of the Tourelles garrison in Paris. After thumbing through the 328 pages that we set on his desk, he can’t keep himself from deploring such a leak, all the while allowing us to understand that the packet represents virtually the entirety of DGSE production on the subject for this crucial period. On the other hand, it was impossible to draw the least comment from him on the substance of the material. Too sensitive.

It’s true that these secret services chronicles about al-Qaeda, with their various revelations, raise many questions.…

The suppression of truth has long been among the highest priorities for the
upper echelons of power and authority. For a minority elite that clings to power
by the manipulation of the masses using an omnipresent cocktail of lies, deception,
mass-produced ignorance and ingrained propaganda, the destruction of truth is
an essential method of control. It is a formula that has worked to unmitigated
success for the elite throughout history, whether the shadows of power stretch
from ancient pyramids, marble temples, castles, mansions or halls of governance.
Those holding the levers of power and control understand, better than most,
that the dissemination of truths to a blind majority could spell the end of
their reign, for truth brings sight to the blind.

These entities understand that truth is like a massive breath of fresh mountain
air, pure and energizing, refreshing and invigorating, and that once inhaled
by the masses, the balance of control can easily be disturbed and seriously
threatened. Revolution of the many against the few oftentimes results, mostly
to the enormous detriment of the powerful. They know that widespread circulation
of the truths of what they have done in the past and are at present doing to
the majority could light a flame onto a massive cauldron overflowing with dry
kindling, sparking an enormous inferno of anger. Truth, in short, could lead
to an awakening of hundreds of millions of human beings who for too long have
had their minds held captive by the instruments of control used by those in
power.…

Professor David Ray Griffin is the nemesis of the official 9/11 conspiracy theory. In his latest book, Debunking 9/11 Debunking , Griffin destroys the credibility of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Popular Mechanics reports, annihilates his critics, and proves himself to be a better scientist and engineer than the defenders of the official story.

Paul Craig Roberts joins former CIA official Larry Christison and Howard Zinn with praise for the book.

Griffin’s book is 385 pages divided into four chapters and containing 1,209 footnotes. Without question, the book is the most thorough presentation and examination of all known facts about the 9/11 attacks. Griffin is a person who is sensitive to evidence, logic, and scientific reasoning. There is no counterpart on the official side of the story who is as fully informed on all aspects of the attacks as Griffin.

At the outset, Griffin points out that the reader’s choice is between two conspiracy theories: One is that Muslim fanatics, who were not qualified to fly airplanes, defeated the security apparatus of the US and succeeded in three out of four attacks using passenger jets as weapons. The other is that security failed across the board, not merely partially but totally, because of complicity of some part of the US government.

Griffin points out that there has been no independent investigation of 9/11. What we have are a report by a political commission headed by Bush administration factotum Philip Zelikow, a NIST… Continue reading →

Background: Ali al-Marri, a citizen from Qatar, was arrested on Dec. 12, 2001 in Peoria, Ill., where he was living with his wife and five children while studying computer science at Bradley University. He was initially charged with credit card fraud and lying to federal agents. Then in 2003, he was transfered to military custody and designated an enemy combatant. Government officials contended that he was an al-Qaeda sleeper agent, sent to the United States to commit mass murder and disrupt the banking system. Mr. al-Marri denied the charges and challenged his detention. His case took on added significance when Mr. al-Marri was left as the only enemy combatant being held in mainland America.

The federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., ruled yesterday that the president may not declare civilians in this country to be “enemy combatants” and have the military hold them indefinitely. The ruling was a stinging rejection of one of the Bush administration’s central assertions about the scope of executive authority to combat terrorism.

The ruling came in the case of Ali al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar now in military custody in Charleston, S.C., who is the only person on the American mainland known to be held as an enemy combatant. The court said the administration may charge Mr. Marri with a crime, deport him or hold him as a material witness in connection with a grand jury investigation.

“But military detention of al-Marri must cease,” Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote for the majority of a divided three-judge panel.…

Cheney Determined To Strike In US With WMD This Summer
Only Impeachment, Removal or General Strike Can Stop Him

By Webster G. Tarpley 7-21-7

“The greatest threat now is ‘a 9/11′ occurring with a group of terrorists armed not with airline tickets and box cutters, but with a nuclear weapon in the middle of one of our own cities.” — Dick Cheney on Face the Nation, CBS, April 15, 2007

A few days ago, a group of lawyers from western Massachusetts met with the local congressman, Democrat John Olver. Their request was that Olver take part in the urgent effort to impeach Bush and Cheney. Olver responded by saying that he had no intention of doing anything to support impeachment. He went further, offering the information that the United States would soon attack Iran, and that these hostilities would be followed by the imposition of a martial law regime here.

According to reports in the British press, the Cheney war party has gained the upper hand in the secret councils of the Bush White House, pushing aside the purported hesitations of Miss Rice, Secretary Gates, and the NATO allies to chart a direct course towards war with Iran:

‘The balance in the internal White House debate over Iran has shifted back in favour of military action before President George Bush leaves office in 18 months, the Guardian has learned. The shift follows an internal review involving the White House, the Pentagon and the state department over the last month. Although… Continue reading →